Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) has a long and distinguished history of advancing the science and practice of medicine and preparing scholars for clinical and translational research. The Medical Center's 44 NIH institutional training grants and training grants funded through other federal agencies attest to the breadth, skill, and commitment of our faculty to developing future leaders in clinical investigation. The Vanderbilt General Clinical Research Center (GCRC), one of the oldest and largest in the country, has been an important training ground for many of our nation's leading clinical and translational researchers. In 1999, Vanderbilt obtained K30 funding to create a formal curriculum for the multi-disciplinary research training of clinical investigators at VUMC. That funding resulted in a new degree program[unreadable]the Master of Science in Clinical Investigation (MSCI)[unreadable]for training clinical researchers in translational research, including mechanisms of human disease, therapeutic interventions, clinical trials, and the development of new technologies. The K30 award also allowed the expansion of the existing Vanderbilt Master of Public Health (MPH) program for clinical investigators directed toward epidemiologic/behavioral research or outcomes/health services research and the translation of medical discoveries into practice. In the same year, Vanderbilt and Meharry Medical College (MMC), a historically black institution, established the Vanderbilt-Meharry Alliance to promote educational collaboration and increased research in Health Disparities. As highlighted throughout this application, the Alliance has allowed for the sharing of resources for training clinical and translational scientists. In 2002, this collaboration resulted in R25 funding of the Clinical Research and Career Development program at Meharry. One year prior to the funding of the K30, Vanderbilt created the Medical Scholars Program (MSP) to allow select medical students to spend one year engaged in focused research. Development of the program in 2004 provided all medical students with a concentrated experience in clinical science or public health promotion. At the same time, Vanderbilt, recognizing the importance of protected time in the development of successful physician-scientists, established the Vanderbilt Physician-Scientist Development Program (VPSD) to provide salary support to newly appointed assistant professor physicians with significant research experience to receive additional mentored investigative training. In 2002, NCRR K12 funding of the Vanderbilt Clinical Research Scholars (VCRS) program provided trainees in clinical and translational science with a similar mentored research apprenticeship integrated with the didactic training of the MSCI and MPH programs.